The Charge

"There's a little back story that I haven't been…completely
successful with."—Laurie Strode

The Case

Let's talk about the Halloween
films. The first, from director John Carpenter is a well-deserved classic, a
nearly perfect example of slow-burning suspense done right. It made stars out of
actress Jamie Lee Curtis (True Lies) and
movie monster Michael Myers. They squared off again in the inevitable sequel,
notable in that it revealed a deeper connection between Michael and Curtis's
character, Laurie Strode. In the hopes of turning the franchise into an
anthology series of Halloween-themed horror flicks, Halloween III: Season of the Witch
jettisoned Michael Myers for an oddball tale of killer masks, corporate druids,
and that goddamn jingle that drives me up the wall just thinking about it. The
fans reneged, and producers brought back Michael for parts four and five, where
he got a new nemesis, Jamie Lloyd, played by preteen scream queen Danielle
Harris (The Wild Thornberrys). Fan
reactions to these two films are mixed, but I've always enjoyed them in a
"popcorn movie" sense.

That brings us to the subject of this review, a two-sided disc containing
the final three films in the series before it was sucked into Hollywood remake
oblivion.

The sixth film, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers picks up
several years after the shocking cliffhanger at the end of part five. We learn
that little Jamie Lloyd eventually had a baby of her own, and now Michael has
returned, hunting the baby. Michael's psychiatrist/adversary Dr. Loomis (Donald
Pleasance, You Only Live Twice) is
back, we meet another branch of the strode family, someone else from the first
movie shows up, there's an evil cult performing genetic experiments, and it's
all tied into Michael and his supposed "curse."

The movie goes overboard trying to establish a complex mythology for
Michael. Remember back when he was a knife-wielding psycho silently stalking
babysitters? Remember how scary that was? Well, screw that, because now he's got
an elaborate supernatural/sci-fi history, complete with prophecies, ancient
magic, and high-tech DNA weirdness. There are a ton of characters, all with
their own subplots to keep track of, and it's confusing as hell. You shouldn't
have to take notes in order to follow a Halloween movie.

A quick trip around the internet and back reveals that the movie was a
troubled production. The script was constantly being re-written during filming,
and then, after a disastrous test screening, a whole new third act was written
and re-shot. So it's no wonder this thing is a mess. The actors look just as
bewildered as the audience, the camera loves to linger on close-ups of the blood
and gore, and the ending is so random and abrupt that to this day folks all over
the web still don't know what to make of it. There are occasional flashes of
amazing visual style in some scenes, but you've got suffer through one headache
of a movie to get to them.

Jump ahead a few years to the late 1990s, and the seventh film, Halloween
H20. After the success of Scream,
horror had not only gotten popular again, but it had gone postmodern. Dozens of
Scream-esque movies flooded theaters. Because Scream referenced
Halloween so extensively, it made sense to bring back not just Michael
Myers, but Jamie Lee Curtis as well. Because it's twenty years later, it was
time for the series to go retro.

Halloween H20 doesn't mention anything that happened in parts four
through six (and, obviously, part three). Let's see if we can't figure out this
continuity. In Halloween 4: The Return
Of Michael Myers, Laurie Strode has only been "dead" for a year,
while H20 establishes that she's living in California under a new
identity. This means Laurie must have abandoned little Jamie Lloyd at age 8 to
go start her new identity. But, wait, Laurie of that movie has a 17-year-old
son, John (Josh Hartnett, Black Hawk
Down), which means he and Jamie must have known each other when they were
little, right? Unless my math is off, this also makes Jamie the older sibling.
Jamie's tragic fate is made all the more tragic after Halloween H20, in
which Laurie all but forgets and/or denies her daughter's existence.

OK, so the filmmakers wanted to discard the complex and confusing plotlines
of the sequels and go back to basics, putting the focus squarely on Laurie
Strode and Michael Myers. After suffering through the convoluted nonsense that
was part six, I don't blame them. The fault lies not with the filmmakers, but
with this DVD. By putting Halloween 6 and H20 in one package, it
demands viewers watch them back-to-back, which will just add to everyone's
confusion.

This is too bad, because there's a lot to enjoy about H20. One of the
first times we see Jamie Lee Curtis on screen, she's waking up from a nightmare,
screaming. This immediately reestablishes her title as one of the all-time great
scream queens. There's a thrilling scene near the end of the movie in which
Laurie picks up an axe and goes looking for Michael, with the classic
Halloween theme music cracked to the max. It shows that the characters
have come full circle—now she's the one stalking him.

Jump ahead a few more years, and it's time for yet another sequel,
Halloween: Resurrection. What was hot in 2002? How about the reality TV
boom? So now an unscrupulous producer is wiring a bunch of sexy 20-somethings
with cameras and having them spend the night inside the run-down Myers house.
Michael shows up and, slasher that he is, takes them out one by one during the
live Halloween night broadcast.

Halloween: Resurrection is a gimmick movie, no doubt. The question
is, does the gimmick work? This is not a "found footage" movie, so no
need for Dramamine. There's a semi-clever bit about someone watching the
broadcast sending texts to someone else inside the house. Beyond that, though,
the reality show stuff exists only as an excuse for two things. One, to get a
bunch of good-looking soon-to-be-victims locked inside the house, and two, to
get Busta Rhymes involved.

The rumor at the time was that Halloween: Resurrection was intended
to kick off a whole series of sequels with Busta Rhymes as the hero, battling
Michael Myers each time. I've no idea if this is true, but after watching the
movie, I believe it. Jamie Lee Curtis only appears in a cameo in the first few
minutes, as if she's passing the torch to Busta, for him to take her place as
the human face of the Halloween series. Busta is all about the action
hero quips, the martial arts moves, and the bad attitude. I'd totally check out
this character in his own action movie, but in this one, all he's doing is
trying to upstage good ol' Michael Myers the whole time.

The supporting cast features Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) and Tyra Banks
(America's Next Top Model), so there's that.

I could go on and on, discussing what it is about Michael Myers that makes
him still a viable movie monster all these years later, detailing the other
supporting actors in these three movies and what they bring to their roles, and
further elaborate on how various themes and concepts in each film represents the
era in which it was made, but there's no need for that. This is a stock
catalogue release, unceremoniously dumping the three movies on a double-sided
disc without much thought. In a perfect world, we'd get a multi-disc set for
Halloween 6, with both the theatrical and original cuts of the movie and
tell-all extras about the troubled production. But, we don't live in a perfect
world, so no extras. Halloween H20 could have had retrospectives on Jamie
Lee Curtis's career, or the many ways the series influenced horror and pop
culture during its first 20 years, but nope, no extras. Even worse,
Halloween: Resurrection was previously released on a stand-alone DVD with
commentaries, featurettes, and a nifty yet self-flagellating option to watch
just the "live-cam" parts of the movie. None of those generous extras
are present here. Video and audio are adequate, if unremarkable.

If this disc succeeds at anything, it's to demonstrate how the
Halloween series has suffered from a lack of direction over the years.
Following the classic first film, the franchise become inconsistent, full of
highs and lows but never evening out to create a satisfying experience as a
whole.